Staff working on Capita’s botched civil service pension contract have concerns over data accuracy, data protection and the possible impacts for members scheme members.
According to staff working on the contract, the outsourcing service provider is risking errors in civil servant pension records as it attempts to sort out major problems and backlogs, while the government watches the clock.
According to the PCS union, some of its members working on the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) administration at Capita are being asked to upload large volumes of data into live systems despite known system and validation issues.
Workers have sought written assurances from Capita’s leadership about where responsibility for any problems would sit. They have reported to the PCS union that due to the pressure on time and a lack of functionality and tools, they have not been able to transition the work from the previous service provider. “[Staff] say this has resulted in extensive manual checking, including line-by-line verification of data, increasing workload pressures and the risk of human error,” said the PCS.
Capita has just missed the UK government’s deadline to bring the troubled scheme administration to an expected level by 30 June.
“The PCS understands that significant pressure had been placed on teams due to the June deadline (now missed),” said the union. “Members have told us they believe the current approach, including proposals to load data and address resulting errors at a later stage, created unnecessary risks.”
This emerges on the eve of a joint parliamentary committee meeting that will look deeper into the failings associated with Capita’s takeover of the CSPS.
Capita had not responded to Computer Weekly questions when this article was published.
Under the spotlight
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee jointly invited Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds.
MPs in both committees will come together for a hearing on Wednesday 8 July to “scrutinise problems” with the scheme that has caused financial difficulties for thousands of retired civil servants.
PCS members have also reported reliance on temporary workarounds and support from other teams to address system issues, including false validation triggers. They say these arrangements are not sustainable and do not provide sufficient assurance that large volumes of data can be processed accurately and consistently.
PCS said it has been told of instances where data has not been captured correctly by validation processes and has failed to process through the system, alongside cases where valid data has been incorrectly rejected. Members said this has significantly undermined confidence in the reliability and robustness of the current process.
As reported by Computer Weekly in October last year, the PAC warned the government about the missed IT milestones as being of concern, among other things, which Capita dismissed at the time.
A couple of months later, on 1 December, Capita took over the pension scheme, which has 1.7 million members, from MyCSP. But by January this year, an HMRC troubleshooter had to step in to lead an “urgent recovery plan” amid difficulties following the transfer.
The problems continued, with huge delays in paying out pensions, leaving many scheme members in financial distress, including people with no other source of income receiving no pension.
